Different mechanisms exist for identifying and tracking products. For example, some products include a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag that has an integrated circuit for storing and processing information and an antenna for receiving and transmitting signals. Other products include a barcode that has an optical machine-readable representation of data patterned in two dimensions (2D). An optical scanner reads the barcode to retrieve product identification information.
RFID tags and harcodes can be expensive to produce since they require a variety of different components and processes to manufacture.